A spinout from the University of Oxford in the AI medical imaging space has successfully raised £18.8 million in Series C funding, after securing £4.8 million in the most recent round.
The spinout, Brainomix, is planning to use the funding to make enhancements to its Brainomix 360 Stroke and e-Lung AI imaging platforms. It is also reportedly looking to continue its expansion in the US, deploying across multiple hospitals.
Brainomix’s 360 Stroke automated AI imaging platform is said to offer acute stoke assessment to support decision-making around treatment, whilst the e-Lung platform uses AI-driven CT biomarkers to predict and monitor disease progression in pulmonary fibrosis.
Michalis Papadakis, Brainomix CEO and co-founder, pointed to the investment as a reflection of confidence in the company’s technology and its impact on patient care. “Stroke care depends on speed, while lung fibrosis care requires early identification and consistent clinical decision-making over time, underscoring the need for hospital technologies that support clinicians at the point of care,” he continued.
“With this investment extension, we are well-positioned to enhance customer support across the US and Europe, accelerating the seamless integration of our technology into existing clinical workflows and expanding access to life-saving treatments.”
Wider trend: AI in health and care
HTN was joined by Neill Crump, digital strategy director at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, and Lee Rickles, CIO at Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust, to discuss practical steps health and care organisations can take to prepare for AI. Neill and Lee shared details of their current work and their journey to date, best practices, learnings, challenges, and the opportunities that lie ahead.
The UK Government has published its National Cancer Plan for England, backed by billions of pounds worth of investments in areas such as digital diagnostics, and informed by almost 12,000 responses to an earlier call for evidence from individuals and organisations. In line with the “five big bets” set out by the 10-Year Plan, the government draws up plans to increase the use of robotic surgery, publish a new specification for a national registry for robotically assisted surgery by March 2026, and develop new national training standards to support cancer surgeons in becoming “regular and expert users of surgical robots”. By 2035, half a million procedures will use robotic surgery, it suggests. AI tools such as Ambient Voice will help reduce staff time lost to admin tasks, and AI will assist oncologists in planning radiotherapy “more quickly and accurately”, with recommendations from a GIRFT study into maximising productivity in radiotherapy services to be implemented as soon as it is published.
An automatic AI system developed by Alder Hey clinicians and researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool has received a £1.2 million grant from the NIHR Invention for Innovation programme. The system automates x-ray interpretation, data capture, and monitoring, with an AI algorithm trained on thousands of x-ray images that is capable of locating hip bone outlines and detecting cases where dislocation is beginning to happen. In testing, Alder Hey reports that it has performed similarly to human medical experts in terms of accuracy, whilst taking “a fraction of the time” on the analysis.
